


One Skeleton, to Be Buried by Dust

by Carradee



Series: Feathers on the Sand [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Child slavery, Gen, Other, spy!Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 02:46:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14740581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carradee/pseuds/Carradee
Summary: A side story best read during or afterThe Snow of Angels' Fear.Twelve-year-old Jedi Padawan Quinlan Vos is on a training exercise that he's pretty sure is doubling as a mission assignment when he senses someone's distress in the Force—someone he knows.





	1. Collect the Dust

**Author's Note:**

> **TRIGGER WARNING:**  
>  Child abuse, child marriage, and child pregnancy.
> 
> The abused child is rescued in the first chapter, but what happens to her from there still isn’t…all that great.
> 
> * * *
> 
> In Legends!canon, Depa Billaba broke (ref. _Shatterpoint_ ; definite psychological and possibly sexual abuse was involved, though the book’s narrator doesn’t notice it in those terms). That book is a primary reference for me, in how I view Depa, and my extrapolations pull as much from what’s _not_ in canon as what is.
> 
> She has a sly sense of humor, an enjoyment of zagging where others zig, yet her public reputation is of the perfect Jedi—which means she masks herself in public, which people don’t do without reason. (Best-case scenario, she’s shy, but more likely, she has something to hide.)
> 
> She’s Mace’s padawan, so efficient at killing that it disturbs even him, but her ability to kill is not common knowledge. (But Mace isn’t exactly surprised by it, so they’ve kept it quiet—and why would they need to do that unless they had reason to hide it?)
> 
> She also gets a High Council seat at an unusually young age, which itself is a bit…odd, all things considered.
> 
> There also was very little written of her in canon. Out-of-universe, I’m sure she was merely forgotten, but in-universe…her mission list is _strange_. It doesn’t even fit her reputation.
> 
> Altogether, the simplest in-universe explanation for the incongruencies is that she has a Secret. What that Secret was—and what precisely its effects were—has options. I’m going with one that would also fit what _Shatterpoint_ and some other sources reveal about Mace.
> 
> If you’re looking for rainbows, move along.
> 
> But if you’re looking for background or just to experience kiddie!Quinlan, enjoy. :)
> 
> * * *
> 
> **45 BBY**   
>  **13 years before _Star Wars: Episode I_ and _The Ice of Angels’ Tears_**

The Force-carried distress was so familiar that Jedi Padawan Quinlan Vos spent a few seconds wrestling with his frustration and anger at the sleemos who enjoyed raping children before he stiffened.

He _knew_ that aura.

Quinlan bit his tongue before he said anything aloud in the spaceport alley. He was playing street rat and listening for gossip (ostensibly as a training exercise, but Master Tholme would never waste an opportunity to accomplish multiple goals with one task). Twelve was young enough that even teen gangs dismissed him as a child, yet big enough that he could use adult weaponry in a pinch, and the filth and grime he’d picked up from the spaceport _almost_ muffled his psychometry from reading the durasteel and concrete.

He’d already been mulling on how to help the victim, but he decided to take a few more risks. Force-sensitives were too popular with murderers (for the challenge) and slavers (for the prestige or even breeding).

When had he last seen Depa? She’d been elated that Master Windu had accepted her as his padawan, fulfilling her hopes. Was that before or after Master Tholme taken him from the creche? He’d been pulled out at ten, and Depa wasn’t even a year older than he was, so it couldn’t have been too long before that, at earliest. It had been at _least_ a year, though. Maybe two. How long had she been missing?

Quinlan traced the sensations to a compound, laced with thick walls and barbed wire and armed guards he could sense but not see. If he were just a few years older, the drug den basement would’ve given him an entrance, since that looked to be how the compound supported itself.

This also wasn’t the sort of place where a person could pull a solitary rescue without slaughtering the enemy. Master Windu could manage that sort of kill rate, but not Quinlan. (Yet? Did he _want_ to learn to do that? Did he have a choice?)

He reached with the Force to reassure Depa that she’d been found, that help was coming.

Her aura recoiled, shrinking in on itself. He yanked himself back from her ideation before she could tell he’d sensed it. It would take hours to get help from Master Tholme. Thanks to his attempt to soothe her, she’d seek to take her life before then. He’d have to try on his own.

Quinlan carefully cast out his senses, making sure to avoid her aura but daring to hope that maybe someone else was searching for her nearby.

_There._ Not Master Windu, but Jedi Knight Tahl. Slaughter wasn’t her specialty, either, but she was known to be good with her lightsaber.

His cover as an urchin should hold regardless how Master Tahl was presenting herself, he thought, and she wasn’t too far. He headed that way, daring to hope they’d succeed before Depa killed herself to escape without presumably shaming her master.

_Shaming?_ Quinlan explored the thought and realized why the prospect of rescue had sent her into suicidal ideation. _Oh kriff._

* * *

Master Tahl was in a bar. Quinlan considered slipping in through the back, but that would probably draw too much attention. He instead whined at the front about having a message for the lady with the caff-colored skin, figuring that would stay the same no matter her mission, even if she was hiding the subtle signals that she was a Near-Human, not full.

After what felt like forever but hadn’t been long at all, she came out. Lenses hid the gold stripes in her green eyes, and her long dark hair was braided in an Alderaanian style and streaked with blue. Her flight suit was worn but not ragged, and her boots, belt, and blaster were better-than-average quality. She was playing moderately successful smuggler, then, or something of that ilk.

“Hear you looking for a girl,” he said, letting his native Kiffar bleed through. He was still learning how to mimic local accents and didn’t trust himself to do it while upset. “A ‘Libba’?”

Not the most obvious reference to ‘Depa Billaba’, but if she knew Depa was missing…

Master Tahl gave him a sharp glance that fit both their covers. “Yeah. Hold on.” She stepped back in, and he heard her settle her tab and excuse herself before returning out and rejoining him.

She followed him out and away from the bar, towards the compound where Depa was being held, and he ducked into an empty nook for them to swap notes, trusting the knight could tell if surveillance was active.

“Why me?” she asked.

“My master’s too far,” he said. “They’ll kill her before he gets them all.”

Master Tahl took a few seconds to process that— _his_ master would sooner trick a crowd than kill them, so Quinlan was describing the sort of situation they were facing: a time crunch before Depa died. “Does Libba trust you?”

After what they’d been doing to her? He doubted it.

She grimaced, reading his expression or his aura or both, and pried an emergency comm from inside her belt. “Stream’s gone dry,” she said into it, then waved for him to lead her, the comm in her fist.

Quinlan eyed that warily. Her mission, whatever it was, was now probably wrecked.

“Libba’s worth more,” Master Tahl said softly. “Where is she?”

He led the way.

* * *

Dismay flickered in Master Tahl as she saw the same issues he had with the compound, but she discreetly ‘dropped’ her commlink so a passerby kicked it down into the drug den. “How are you at jumping?”

“Way better at landing,” he admitted—lying or exaggerating your abilities was stupid, in situations like these.

The knight’s aura relaxed a little. “Good.”

She led him on a stroll around the compound until they reached a building tall enough across the street. They went up to the second floor from the top. She listened for persons within and picked the lock of an empty suite that faced the compound.

The window was high enough to get a clear view of the barbed wire, and glimpses of the guards patrolling the courtyard between the wall and the building. The best-dressed of them all had a few thermal detonators.

Quinlan evaluated how far it was from that man to the defense towers. He could wreck the towers with the man’s own detonators. Question was, would Master Tahl believe it?

“I can take out the cannons,” he said outright.

She shook her head. “You’re the tracker. When we hit the ground, you go straight for Depa, and I’ll follow. Treat it as an in-and-out, as fast as we can go.”

He looked pointedly at the guards. No way they’d let them leave like that.

“We time this right, my extraction team will cover our exit.”

“Your extraction…” He remembered the commlink and the code she’d given beforehand. “You lied to Judicial?” Told them her cover was blown?

Her slight shrug probably explained a lot of why she got along with Master Jinn so well, and she pulled her lightsaber hilt from her boot. “It’s about to be true, anyway.”

Quinlan grabbed his, too, and made sure she got a good glance at the setting toggle on the hilt, so she’d know it wasn’t just a training saber, since padawans his age didn’t always have full sabers yet.

“Ready?” Master Tahl asked.

He still wasn’t entirely sure what she was planning, but he knew enough to nod.

She opened the window and flung him out so he’d clear the barbed wire, then sprang after and past him. They both ignited their blades in midair and cushioned their landings with the Force.

Three steps took Quinlan to the thermal detonators, two seconds to arm and fling them to the towers, and one breath to stop the detonators’ previous owner before he could retaliate.

Not Quinlan’s first kill.

He sliced a circle in the compound wall, kicked it in, and dove through, Master Tahl covering his back.

* * *

The gang or whatever they were was caught enough off guard that Quinlan, partially trained Jedi that he was, was able to hold his own, and Master Tahl didn’t hesitate in swiftly preventing any of them from being able to rally themselves enough to give him trouble.

“Thought you were an archivist,” he commented as someone’s blaster (and hand that had been holding it) fell at his feet.

She snorted, bisecting the man he’d just unhanded. “With Jocasta controlling what records I had access to? I’d be bored out of my skull. Dejarik later?”

He dodged someone’s foot a bit more than necessary, not wanting to risk it contacting his skin and sucking him into a reading. Combat _usually_ overrode his psychometry, but sometimes… “Sure.”

The extraction team announced their arrival, and Quinlan fought all the harder to get to Depa before she—before she—

She was being held _in someone’s quarters_. That would make him throw up once he thought about it, so he shoved the thought aside and Force-shoved the blaster away from her and her rapist so she couldn’t turn it on herself.

“Two options,” he said, trying so hard to avoid calculating from the damage precisely how the man had manhandled her while he— “I kill you, or she does.”

Quinlan wasn’t about to leave him to hurt more girls. Even if they had the resources to make an arrest, a trial would sabotage Depa’s reputation both in the Order and without, and he wasn’t about to let the rapist steal something else from her. The pregnancy was going to cause enough problems.

Depa stared blankly at Quinlan, her dark eyes dull in the maze of variously aged bruises and dried blood that was all she was wearing, other than the shackle on her neck.

Life flickered in her eyes, and he sliced through the chain.

Screaming, she launched herself at the man and choked him with her own chain, which was slender enough to cut into skin.Quinlan blocked the man from being able to fight her off.

Her arms gave out before the man was dead, and he finished the job just before Master Tahl caught up. With her guarding them, he tore off his own shirt to give Depa something to cover herself with. He’d consider it incentive to keep his shields locked down _hard_.

“Is there a slave implant?” Master Tahl asked gently.

Depa curled in on herself, arms wrapped around her swollen belly as her hands bled, but shook her head as she sobbed.

“Good.” She picked the collar quickly enough that she’d dealt with that type before.

Depa’s gaze was locked onto the thrown blaster.

Master Tahl checked the situation with the Force and picked her up. “You’re on cover,” she told him. “Let’s go.”

Quinlan was little past twelve, not nearly experienced enough to be trusted with that position.

But he couldn’t carry Depa. She was taller than him. Probably heavier, too, and he didn’t have the endurance with Force-assisted lifting to hoist her, never mind keep her from finding something to kill herself with while he did. And if his psychometry got the better of him…

He carefully breathed out. The situation was what it was, and dwelling on the problems with it only made it more likely he’d screw up. “Understood.”

* * *

Pregnancy wasn’t something most Jedi had much experience with—contraceptive implants were standard, though not entirely constant or universal. (Such Core medical treatment could be a safety risk, depending on mission circumstances… but the missions like _that_ usually went to men.)

Quinlan’s master was one of the few Jedi Healers who’d delivered a child before, somewhere between his being a Shadow (spy) and Watchman (ambassador…sorta). Quinlan didn’t know the details, but Master Tholme _would_ know what to do.

Getting Depa to safety was paramount, so Quinlan hurried back to his master’s ship without checking in. His master’s introduction to the situation came upon their entry on the ship.

Master Tholme took a second to glance over the three of them, then directed Quinlan to get Depa settled in the bedroom.

”But—”

“Better you than me, Padawan, and Tahl has to chat with Judicial,” Master Tholme said, proving he both noticed and understood.

So Master Tahl set Depa on her feet, and Quinlan guided her into the bunk room.

Depa shivered as Quinlan settled her on his pallet. She’d stopped sobbing, at least, though she still sniffled. “Master will be so ashamed.”

“Nonsense,” Quinlan said as he dug through his bag for something she could wear. “He’ll be relieved you’re alive.”

“I should’ve stopped them,” she said, voice small. “I’m a _Jedi_.”

“That doesn’t make you omnipotent. Or invincible.” His tunic might work, sort of, but his trousers would be too small for her, and he really couldn’t leave his skin uncovered. Where was his cloak?

She shook her head and repeated, “I should have stopped them.”

“How, exactly? He was three times your weight and reach, surrounded by allies. You could’ve stopped him once, sure. Probably even twice.” Quinlan tried to hide his awareness of her guilt as he tossed her his cloak and put on his tunic, himself. Her hands, sliced by her chain, would have to wait for Master Tholme to tend them. “But then they’d drug you, or maim you, or kill you. You made the judgment call you did for a reason.”

“I made it because I was _afraid_!” she snapped, then froze and curled in on herself, bracing for a blow.

“You had reason to be,” he answered, reasonably.

She shook her head in outright denial.

“Depa, _you stayed alive_.” Enslaved padawans tended to either escape in the first month or turn up dead, and her pregnancy said she’d been gone for longer than a month. “You kept them from drugging you.”

“What are you talking about? I’m blocked.”

“Oh.” That was why Master Tahl had relied on him to find her. “I can, uh, sense you. Enough to track, anyway.”

_Just add it to the reasons I_ have _to be a Shadow._

She hugged her knees. “Will they let me stay in the service corps, you think? When Mas—” She choked on the word. “When _he_ repudiates me?”

“Why would he do that?”

“A high councilor loses his padawan to slavers?” she asked sadly. “Finds her _pregnant_? It doesn’t matter how happy he’ll be to see me or how much he wants to keep me. He _can’t_.”

Was she just panicking, or was she right about the politics?

Studying her was worsening her anxiety. Quinlan lay on his master’s bunk, hands tucked under his head so he obviously couldn’t use them to grab anything. Her tension reduced immediately.

“Master Tholme will take care of all that,” he reassured her. He didn’t know how, but his master _would_. “You won’t have to give up your master unless you want to.” _Er._ “I mean, unless you want to leave the Jedi so you can keep the baby?”

She shuddered.

He hadn’t thought so.

* * *

Master Tahl excused herself promptly, to go help with the other girls rescued by Judicial’s raid—apparently the compound had been one of those cults where men enslaved females and claimed they were wives. From what details Quinlan ‘overheard’, Depa seemed to be the youngest—not by much, but by enough that she’d probably been picked for her midichlorians, for the possibility of Force-sensitive offspring. The age had just been so she could be captured and controlled and all that.

Master Tholme asked to speak to Depa, but he waited for her to come out to him, rather than entering the bedroom, himself. She wrapped herself in Quinlan’s cloak and shuffled to the doorway.

He met her there with the medkit and tended her sliced hands and other visible wounds. “Mace is very happy you’re alive,” he said, “but he can’t come yet because then he’ll lose plausible deniability with the idiots.”

“I see,” Depa whispered, blinking back tears. “Thank you, Mas…”

She fought with her voice to finish the sentence.

Master Tholme was letting sadness show. “Call me Tholme, child. You don’t need to call anyone ’master”, right now.”

“I broke cover,” Quinlan said. “And we didn’t hide coming here.” _Should we leave?_

“Tahl told me. But let’s discuss our options, first.” Master Tholme didn’t do smiles, not like Quinlan’s parents had—maybe because he still mourned them, too—but his compassion was palpable in the Force.

“First option: We can take you back to Coruscant, be forthright about your kidnapping. There will be gossip and bullying, but that’s the only way that we’ll be able to give the child to the Temple if he takes after you. You’ll see a mind healer for the rest of your apprenticeship, and there _may_ be some side effects into knighthood.

“Second option: We terminate the pregnancy, tend you through whatever the father set up to discourage that, and quietly take you back to Coruscant. You’ll have to see a mind healer—and this one _will_ affect your options in knighthood, because whether you admit or hide the termination, no mind healer will clear you for standard duty with the precedent of termination or lying about severe trauma.

“Third option: We discreetly spin this entire mess as you getting some special education that Mace can’t provide while stuck on Coruscant, what truly happened never gets reported, and the child is quietly handed off to a family as soon as he’s born. If we do this, your apprenticeship and knighthood shouldn’t be affected, but you won’t be able to see a mind healer. Tahl and Quinlan freed some slaves. That you were one of them will stay secret.”

Quinlan thought they all sounded _awful_.

Depa shivered in the doorway.

“You don’t have to choose right away,” Master Tholme said gently. “Mace says he’ll support you no matter what. He’s been keeping your birthday present for you.”

A cry tore from her throat, and her knees gave out. Quinlan barely caught her before she hit the floor hard, and he was going to have some bad bruises of his own.

He looked from his weeping crechemate to his master and abruptly realized Depa was _thirteen_ , the year when Jedi Initiates knew for certain if they would be padawans or be reassigned to the service corps. That made the birthday Important among padawans, and masters tended to respect that with special gifts.

“The father's dead,” Quinlan said abruptly. “We killed him.”

“Good,” Master Tholme answered.

Depa, as the padawan of a councilor who was _not_ a Shadow and therefore lacked the pragmatism fast gained by all successful spies, stared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I summarize my thoughts on Jedi Shadows in another Author’s Note (bottom of chapter 4 of _The Snow of Angels’ Fear_ ). My interpretation of the Order assumes that, with how Sith have been assumed extinct and the Republic’s kept things “at peace” for so long, the spy-type roles would be considered obsolete and inappropriate, with a strong stigma against them. They also would be an extremely low percentage of the Order population, in general, which wouldn’t help.
> 
> Even though traditionally, Sentinels were more spy/thief/rogue types and Shadows specifically specialized in Darksiders, I assume the roles would be conflated now, and “shadow” just covers all who focus on the dark sides of both society and the Force.
> 
> The nature of their work and the training methods necessary for surviving it means they’d give children credit for being able to give consent even more thoroughly than the rest of the Order in general.
> 
> (They outright _need_ folks to wash out if they can’t cope with brutality—and any padawans who choose to be Shadows must essentially double major in a more standard Jedi position while graduating no later than others of their age group, so external observers can’t easily identify who’s trained as a Shadow and who isn’t.)
> 
> Padawans would theoretically be able to change “majors”, so to speak, if they wished, so the overtly abusive, brutal training of Shadows would therefore ultimately be consensual. (From what I’ve heard about military training, it can be similarly brutal, both psychologically and physically, intended at least partially so folks who can’t handle it _will_ wash out.)
> 
> I figure that the Shadows would also, by necessity, have a stronger and more accurate understanding of psychology than the Order in general. Their work requires it. They also can’t afford to ignore psychological fitness for the work, unless they want to create Darksiders or even Sith.
> 
> Since the Shadows often encounter things like slavers and assassins and such, padawans would be taught pretty early stuff like explicit descriptions of what is and isn’t their fault, whereas more standard masters might not bother or even think of it until something happens that makes the padawan _need_ that sort of help.
> 
> Per my setup, Depa is not a Shadow, nor is she being trained by one. Tholme, however, is forgetting to account for that—she’s grandpadawan of a very good friend of his, after all. He’s assuming that she has a foundation in coping mechanisms that she hasn’t actually been taught, and he’s frankly used to even kids her age already being used to navigating traumatic events, as in Quinlan’s acceptance of even killing folks.
> 
> Thus why Tholme is jumping straight into letting her pick how she’s going to handle the pregnancy. He’s not being negligent or cruel; he’s just treating her no differently from how he would a Shadow her age.


	2. Hide the Skeleton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “First option: We can take you back to Coruscant, be forthright about your kidnapping. There will be gossip and bullying, but that’s the only way that we’ll be able to give the child to the Temple if he takes after you. You’ll see a mind healer for the rest of your apprenticeship, and there may be some side effects into knighthood.
> 
> “Second option: We terminate the pregnancy, tend you through whatever the father set up to discourage that, and quietly take you back to Coruscant. You’ll have to see a mind healer—and this one will affect your options in knighthood, because whether you admit or hide the termination, no mind healer will clear you for standard duty with the precedent of termination or lying about severe trauma.
> 
> “Third option: We discreetly spin this entire mess as you getting some special education that Mace can’t provide while stuck on Coruscant, what truly happened never gets reported, and the child is quietly handed off to a family as soon as he’s born. If we do this, your apprenticeship and knighthood shouldn’t be affected, but you won’t be able to see a mind healer. Tahl and Quinlan freed some slaves. That you were one of them will stay secret.”

Depa chose option three. Because, she said, that was the only one that wouldn’t have repercussions for Master Windu.

Quinlan didn’t think that was right, that she took all responsibility and consequences on herself—masters were supposed to protect their padawans and teach them how to protect others, with the padawan’s protection of the master being a side effect rather than a goal. But it was her choice to make.

Master Tholme accepted her choice without comment and plotted them a route out. “I know just the place.”

“Not Jedi,” Depa blurted.

“This planet doesn’t even have a Watchman,” his master promised.

That night, Master Tholme slept in the cockpit. Quinlan would have, too, except Depa asked him to stay.

* * *

The planet they went to was more water than Quinlan had thought possible, with a core that violated what he knew of physics. They passed a few spaceports and cities to land in a field in the middle of nowhere.

A woman was waiting by the ship’s off-ramp, leaning against a speeder. Her gown was made of alternating narrow panels of green and gray, embroidered in brown, and the weight, durability, and tailoring all bespoke its quality—that cost money, despite the practical, rustic cut. She was older than his master by maybe a decade.

Master Tholme paused—only a moment, but that moment told Quinlan that the woman’s presence had startled him, too. “Winnie. Thank you for having us.”

Winnie held an arm out to Depa in wordless offer to help her move or of a hug, whichever she might want.

Depa froze.

A smile softened Winnie’s face, making her look closer to Master Mace’s age, and she lowered her arm, acceptance flowing from her aura. “I know you asked for a cottage, but considering the situation, I think the villa might be better.”

“I trust your judgement and discretion,” Master Tholme answered, as they all climbed into the speeder.

Master Tholme’s distrust of others was _legendary_. Quinlan thought he managed to keep his surprise from showing, but it slipped into the Force before he could rein it in.

A gentle presence in the Force netted the feeling, holding it near him until he managed to rearrange his aura to constrain and discreetly process it, himself.

“You’re Force-sensitive!” Depa blurted, her own surprise blossoming and overwhelming her fear.

“Yes,” Winnie acknowledged. “Runs in the family.”

The curiosity glowing from Depa brought Quinlan much relief. Despite the harms done to her, his friend was still alive. Damaged, maybe even broken, but not destroyed to the point of no return.

“Why aren’t _you_ a Jedi?” she asked.

“I like my weaving,” the woman answered frankly, “and Jedi aren’t the only path that’s in the Light. My sister follows yet another way, though she tried your Order for a time.”

“’Lu was one of my crechemates,” Master Tholme said, both explaining how he knew Winnie while also…very much not explaining a thing.

Most Jedi had nothing to do with their families, usually not even knowing who they were. Quinlan’s own memory of his clan and parents were part of why some politically-minded Jedi didn’t want him around. For his master to be friends with the sister of a crechemate who’d left the Order was…odd, on multiple levels.

Odd, but ultimately beneficial, which sufficed to answer why his master had kept up with the friendship. Master Tholme was nothing but pragmatic, to a degree that would’ve been considered a fault if he weren’t a Shadow.

The land was beautiful and soothing, and the rolling fields turned to a lake. They crossed the water to an ocean, and Winnie docked at a villa.

A man came out to join them. “Food’s ready.”

“Excellent timing as always, Paddy,” Winnie answered. “The girl’s going to be here quietly for a while. The other two might be staying, too.”

“Should I call the doctor?”

Depa stiffened.

Winnie hummed. “Time to buy a medical droid, I think. Say my wrist’s acting up. That’ll explain why I’m not getting much work done, this season.”

She turned to the three of them. “Paddy is the caretaker here. You can trust his discretion, but he’d rather know as few secrets as possible.”

Quinlan could respect that. What you didn’t know, you didn’t have to lie about.

Tholme introduced him and Depa by their first names, and didn’t give titles for any of them. The lightsabers and tunics doubtless let the caretaker recognize them as Jedi, but he didn’t ask, they didn’t tell, and they promptly changed into the incredibly comfortable civilian clothes that Winnie had provided for their stay.

* * *

Temple younglings and Initiates wore simple white tunics and slacks made of bleached bantha fur. They were easy to clean and promoted the intended uniformity among the younglings, while they (hopefully) learned the importance of cohesiveness and of focusing on similarities rather than differences among each other.

Padawan attire varied a bit more, dependent on species, lineage, and study track. Standard were unbleached versions of the Initiate uniform, and every padawan had at least two sets.

Quinlan always left one of his back at the Temple, since he could never be sure how much of his supplies would escape with him on a mission, with his spare set being on-hand if it might be needed and could be brought without endangering anyone.

Maybe it was how he’d come to the Order later than most, but he preferred civilian clothes. Depa, though—she’d come to the Order as an infant, less than a year old, and Jedi robes were what she knew. She didn’t even know how to wear civilian clothing, and her curiosity latched into various cuts and styles.

Winnie noticed and provided variety, quietly encouraging the interest. “It doesn’t matter if you wear it,” the woman said. “Anything you decide you dislike will just get donated elsewhere.”

Although Winnie had linked the catalogue to an account that she could use, Depa never actually placed the order. She just flagged what caught her eye and probably presumed that Winnie made the decision, but Quinlan saw Paddy and Master Tholme hit the buy button a few times…and admittedly did it himself, a time or four.

The delivered clothing, Depa would bring to Quinlan to help her put them on as she figured it all out. He didn’t know why she trusted him, after what had been done to her, but he wasn’t about to ask.

One day, Depa brought him a sweater with shoulder buttons. As Quinlan worked out how it worked and started showing her how to put it on, he realized he didn’t remember the last time Depa said something.

He stared at her.

Her gaze stayed on the floor, though she was enough of a Force empath that she’d surely caught the shift in his emotions.

“Depa?” he asked quietly.

She swallowed and shook her head, blinking back tears, without shifting her gaze.

He missed her sly humor, and he concentrated on not letting that poison his tone. “Okay. I’ll find a tablet for you.”

He asked Winnie the very next time he saw her, too, and she frowned at him. “What do you need that…?”

Depa shuffled into the room behind him, froze, started shifting back.

“I see,” Winnie said heavily. “Do Jedi learn a sign language?”

Quinlan glanced at Depa (who didn’t move, just stared at Winnie) and shook his own head.

“Well, then,” she both said and signed. “Let’s fix that.”

* * *

Winnie stopped leaving the villa, then. Quinlan wasn’t sure if it was specifically so she could immerse them in the sign language (which Paddy knew and used, too), or if the timing was coincidental, since Master Tholme started hopping out for the sorts of missions where folks would see him without his padawan and just assume Quinlan was around.

And if Tholme’s talking about how Depa had been with them lately caused others to assume she was there, too? All the better.

Main problem was that letting folks assume Depa was getting exposed to Shadow work meant that she actually needed to learn some things, because people would assume she knew more than she did. Tholme either overlooked that or assumed Quinlan would handle it.

Quinlan _was_ a senior padawan, despite his age, so the expectation was even reasonable, for his rank. Just…not for his age. How was he supposed to teach Depa? She was _older_ than he was.

He sighed, sat down, and put together a lesson plan that took into account what Depa would be assumed to know, for hanging out with them, and what might help her feel safer.

First class: lockpicking.

And if he included some theory for presumed mythical devices like Sith collars that Depa was definitely _not_ allowed to know about, well, Tholme shouldn’t have left him on his lonesome.

He was only twelve, after all. How was he supposed to keep track of what was classified?

* * *

Then came the evening when Quinlan nearly stabbed Winnie with a kitchen knife.

It wasn’t on purpose. She’d just suddenly appeared behind him while he was prepping tubers for lunch.

(Would the adults feed them every meal if asked? Yes. But he had to know enough about cooking to feed himself on missions, when necessary, and knowing how things cooked could help him notice when they were tampered with.)

She glanced at the blade, which he’d barely redirected from entering her arm, and the cutting board. “They’ll turn out better if you make them long and thin,” she said, “and you should’ve stabbed me. What if I’d been someone masking as me, hmm?”

Quinlan hadn’t known it was possible to make your aura feel like someone else’s, but he wasn’t so young that he admitted it. Hiding, he’d known about, though he’d not known she could do it. But _mimicking_ someone else?

“Okay,” he said. “Next time, I’ll stab you.”

Winnie gave the bright smile that made her look a decade or two younger. “Good.”

* * *

Quinlan followed through on his promise, where the next time Winnie startled him—while he was going through the katas of Form I, in an empty room in a little-used wing where Paddy didn’t have to notice—he outright singed her thigh with his lightsaber.

He pulled back before it burned, and her sidestep would’ve dodged regardless, but he still had to bite his tongue against the urge to apologize. He’d just been following instructions. If she wanted him to apologize, that was her problem, not his.

But Winnie was grinning. “Excellent! Here’s what you missed—”

And she drew his attention to subtle eddies in the Force, hints that could’ve cued him in, details that would be really helpful in tracking.

Quinlan eyed her, wondering if Tholme had intended all along to leave him with her for a few weeks. “What about Depa?” he asked outright. Why wasn’t _she_ being taught this?

“Does she want to learn?” The faux-innocence in Winnie’s tone suggested that she didn’t have permission to teach Depa, just him, but she’d conveniently forget that if asked.

She kept the façade under his scrutiny, so she was doing that on purpose, maybe even understood that the Order had…issues with this sort of thing. How would she know that?

“Your sister,” he thought out loud. But that was an assumption, so he asked outright, “Do you know who her master was?”

She’d said her sister tried the Order for a time, not that she’d aged out, so she’d probably made padawan.

Winnie’s smile softened, turned rueful. “I’m afraid she never trusted me enough for that.”

“It’s not without reason,” Tholme cut in, announcing his return as he entered the room, and amusement colored his voice.

Winnie gave him a flat look.

“A Jedi must conquer their fears,” he answered, still amused, with the edge of a longstanding argument. “’Lu’s aversion to violence can easily be mistaken for fear of it.”

 _Can?_ His master was still in contact?

Quinlan glanced between them. The admission seemed unintentional—a slip, not a pointed hint.

Keeping the conversation about Lu’s distrust of her sister would be good. How could Winnie have been a threat to a Jedi she disliked? “You taught my master how to fiddle with memories?”

His comment was a shot in the dark, truly—there were other places where Tholme could have learned that, discreetly enough for the Order to be ignorant of the skill—but their mutual amusement blossomed. It was as good as an answer, and Quinlan took it as such.

Time for a new topic. “Welcome back, Master. Can we go through Form III? I’m thinking that might work for Depa.”

Soresu didn’t _have_ to move around all that much.

Surprise flickered through Tholme, and he let it show on his face. “I hadn’t thought of that. But I’m not sure…”

Pregnancy affected equilibrium, balance. That was obvious.

“Practice in the lake,” Winnie said with a shrug. “Plenty of people use water to help with weight distribution difficulties.” Her gaze sharpened and narrowed at Tholme, and her expression came as close to a scowl as Quinlan had ever seen. “You _did_ bring the girl a saber?”

Tholme’s smile was outright sheepish. He really _did_ trust Winnie.

For her part, Winnie closed her eyes and muttered an unsavory description of Tholme. “Give me a list of what you’ll need, then. The girl can build her own blade. It’ll be good for her anyway.”

“We can’t afford a trip to Ilum—”

Between Quinlan’s confusion and Winnie’s arch look, Tholme stopped mid-sentence and smiled ruefully. Kyber crystals weren’t only on Ilum—and they weren’t the only way to power a saber, to begin with. Depa could easily build something and replace the crystals later.

Winnie frowned hard, gaze dancing as if she was reading an invisible flimsi before her face. “Do most Jedi customize their sabers, or is that just Micah?”

She knew Master Giiett?

“We all do,” Tholme said. “Just some more obviously than others.”

She scowled at him. “You should’ve said something.”

“Paddy doesn’t want to know, though,” Quinlan said reluctantly. “Should we—”

Winnie shook her head against his concern. “He doesn’t have to assume that ‘lightsaber’ means ’Jedi’ if he doesn’t want to. Can I ask her if she wants anything for it, or would that be…emotionally fraught?”

Tholme looked at Quinlan, as if he would know. “I’ll handle it tonight.” His master pulled out his lightsaber and adjusted it to training mode. “Let’s go over Form III.”

Winnie shook her head at him but saw herself out.

* * *

Depa built her lightsaber at the kitchen table, while Quinlan carefully prepared a slow-cooked roast. She was _good_ at it, too—faster than Quin, for sure, and probably even faster than Master Tholme would have been, though she wasn’t a mechanic.

She always had liked puzzles.

While it was time to wait between steps in making the meal, he worked on his own homework. He had two essays to write and…

He double-checked the assignment details and sighed, forwarding it as an attachment to his master. Teachers didn’t always bother to remember that he wasn’t one of the usual students. Visiting a particular brothel to interview a prosti about why she chose that life ( _Why assume that it was a choice?_ ) wasn’t something he’d have been able to do even if he _had_ been on Coruscant, at the moment.

Quinlan _could_ have protested the assignment, himself, but he’d found that the teachers who made those mistakes preferred to deal with him as little as possible. He suspected it was the age thing.

The essays took about an hour each, helped by the fact that Master Vall didn’t mind if he skipped the outline.

The end result was that dinner, his immediate homework, and Depa’s lightsaber all got finished at about the same time. He was pulling plates out of the cabinet as she turned her new blade on.

Brilliant green lit the room—he hadn’t realized how dim it had gotten, and a glance out the balcony said rain was coming.

She didn’t say anything, not even by signing. Just turned it on, tilted the blade a few different ways—testing grip, not swing, which was…interesting and worried him a little, though he couldn’t say why—then turned it off and put it away.

“I was thinking we could practice soresu in the lake,” he said. “Water would provide resistance, more of a workout.”

In open acknowledgement of the reason he didn’t say, Depa rubbed her stomach, which was too large and had to be heavy—she had two, maybe three months to go, the medic droid said, with a possibility that it might be healthier and safer for her to induce early.

That was when Winnie decided to startle him.

Depa flung her lit lightsaber.

Hair and fabric fell to the floor, and the reek of burned flesh filled the air.

Winnie hadn’t made a sound, but she was bent forwards with a hand to her abdomen. She stared at Depa with eyes wide enough that the girl’s reaction had honestly startled her. She hadn’t played the game around Depa before, Quinlan realized.

“Are you okay?” he asked, reaching for his commlink because her reaction was not a good sign at all.

His master slid to a stop in the room before he even touched the device.

Winnie’s focus snapped to Master Tholme. “It occurs to me,” she said through clenched teeth, “that there are certain things that would’ve been good for me to know.”

That concerned Quinlan—how badly was she injured?—but Tholme looked unsympathetic.

“I told you to be careful,” he said.

“That wasn’t—” Winnie’s gaze snapped to Quinlan, and she cut herself off. “Most of you aim to disable.”

“Yes,” Tholme said mildly. “‘Most’ do. Do you want help trying to salvage your kidney?”

Depa hunched, staring at the table and apparently understanding more of that than Quinlan did.

Winnie clenched her jaw and moved her hand—and Quinlan could see that she’d caught the lightsaber _in her body_ , stopping it before it could slice her through. She disabled it without looking at the hilt.

Cold ran through him. That would’ve killed her, if she hadn’t possessed enough Force-enhanced reflexes to interrupt the arc.

If Depa’s training was like that…

Well, the way she blamed herself for her captivity made a little more sense, now, though it was still bantha kark.

Still bent, obviously favoring her wound, Winnie hobbled over to the table and rolled Depa’s lightsaber back to her. “I apologize for causing you distress.”

Depa’s dark eyes were the only part of her that moved, and she was so obviously _wary_ that Quinlan suspected he’d missed something.

Winnie sighed. “Truly, girl. It’s not your fault. You responded to a perceived threat, and my unreadiness for the consequences was my own fault. Throwing your blade isn’t the best tactic, but it’s an effective one for your condition. I’m the one who got lazy and assumed you’d respond like your friend, here.”

She reached for Tholme, who helped her far more readily than their conversation might’ve led a sentient to expect.

“Eat without us,” Tholme said. “And don’t blame yourself.”

Easier ordered than done, Quinlan knew, but… He scrutinized Depa, then made sure to turn away towards the food before he frowned. She felt _embarrassed_ , not guilty.

He dished out dinner for them both while Depa drew designs on the table with her finger.

Not designs, he realized as he put her dinner before her. Words. _Vapaad_ and _seven_ and…

And _form_.

Did she mean—?

He snapped his attention to her face, but she was still looking towards the table. Her fingers curled up, though, so she knew he’d seen it.

That he’d seen it, and that her message had been something he wasn’t supposed to know.

She ate methodically, but easily enough that she liked the taste. She was slower when she didn’t care for things.

Quinlan took his time with his own meal, unable to taste it as his mind whirled at the implications of what he’d just witnessed.

There was a Form VII, called vapaad, and it focused on terminating an enemy rather than disabling them. That explained why Master Windu was so good at slaughter situations. Master Windu had also been teaching Depa Form VII, despite her age—enough that it was Depa’s default form.

Did Depa even _know_ how to disable, or had Master Windu overlooked that?

Efficiently killing an enemy could be useful, but…having it as your go-to form struck Quinlan as a Fall waiting to happen.

Depa stared at her empty plate, which wasn’t unusual. He hadn’t figured out _why_ she did that—if he refilled it, she wouldn’t eat it.

“Did you waterproof the hilt?” he asked carefully.

She gave a single, slight nod.

Okay, then. “Form III? I really think it’ll be good for you.”

With the baby. With VII being her only real form.

Her dark gaze slid to him. He smiled, but he was pretty sure his uneasiness colored it.

Her answering smile was a little wistful, a little rueful. He was scared of her now, and she was empathic enough that the sensation wasn’t pleasant for either of them.

“I’ll get over it,” he told her.

The fact that she answered with an incredulous _look_ , wordlessly saying that it would be stupid for him to do so, just made him all the more determined to help her with soresu, to give her something she could lean on that didn’t require her to kill.

He put away the leftovers, stuck the dishes in the sink, and helped her up. “You don’t _have_ to be a killer, Depa.”

She patted him on the head, as if she found him sweet, and left the room without him.

Quinlan double-checked the cleanup, then followed, remembering how there were so many reasons that he _had_ to be a Shadow. Was Depa in a similar situation?

And if she was, could she afford to tell him?

* * *

Winnie’d only _had_ one kidney, Quinlan realized soon after the Incident, as he took to thinking of it. He couldn’t call it an accident, because it really hadn’t been, but everyone else ignored it, so he wasn’t sure what else to call it. Even the interrupted injury would’ve killed Winnie, without treatment.

He wasn’t sure what was more terrifying: the implications about Depa’s training, or the way the adults were ignoring those implications.

Quinlan tried to bring it up, but Master Tholme dismissed his concerns under the excuse of Guardians having their own ways of doing things. (Quinlan knew that—Depa wasn’t his only friend who was a Guardian!) Winnie just shrugged and said some people were like that. (Just because some people _were_ quick to kill didn’t mean _Depa_ had to be!)

So he did what he could, but he had a full load of senior padawan classes, his lessons from Master Tholme, his lessons from Winnie (which Depa started joining, which Quinlan wasn’t sure was a good idea), and he was _twelve_.

Depa was thirteen—still a child, but less of one. She was also a _junior_ padawan, which added a whole different type of awkwardness to their interactions after she realized he _wasn’t_.

He kept finding his data reader in her hands, after that, whenever he had to put it down for training and such. She devoured his class syllabi and notes and reading material and homework. (He changed his password one or two dozen times before he gave up on trying to keep her out of it. Maybe the psychology would help her?)

She was jealous as kriff, and while she obviously didn’t blame him for it, she also wished his classes were open to _her_. Some would be, once she passed her lower classes, but others…

Depa could never be a Shadow. Killing was too ingrained, and part of her was furious with Mace for closing that path to her. The rest of her felt guilty about it—about her anger at Mace, about her longing for what Quinlan had but didn’t want, about her annoyance and frustration with _him_ for not wanting what he had no choice but to be.

She threw herself into learning Form III, though, and Quinlan dared hope that maybe, _maybe_ , they’d caught her conditioning early enough, that she could retrain herself to default to disabling instead of killing.

Maybe.

But he remembered where he’d found her, remembered how she’d sought to kill her owner despite believing Master Tholme wouldn’t approve, and he feared it was too late for her already. Self-study of psychology could only do so much.

Maybe if she had professional help, but…with what she’d chosen, with the baby, she would never—could never—have that.


End file.
